Protests at Universtiy of Mississippi
how Kent State and Jackson State changed America
For thirty years, I gathered information on Richard Nixon, with the idea that I could one day write a classical Greek tragedy out of his life. He was, I believed, a truly great but deeply flawed person. I understood these to be the basic ingredients of tragedy, as described by Aristotle in his essay on Poetics.
Historians agree that the Nixon presidency was greatly changed by the Kent State shootings. The day after tomorrow is the fifty-fourth anniversary of the Kent State shooting. There are many unsubstantiated stories about things that happened in the days following the shooting, but we know that on May 8, after Nixon’s historic press conference where he defended his record in Viet Nam and pledged support not to silence or muzzle protests in the United States, Nixon refused to sleep, and in the middle of the night put on his overcoat, demanded a secret service detail, and visited college protestors at the Lincoln Memorial. After talking on the phone with Billy Graham, Nixon believed he had won over the nation’s young people and wanted to prove it by walking in among them. In a surreal vision, Richard Nixon was shaking hands with the hippies that he believed were now on his side.
Nixon believed the protests on campus were caused by “outside agitators.” He charged J. Edgar Hoover and Roy Cohn with rooting out and finding these people. They never could. There weren’t outside agitators. There weren’t communist agents disguising themselves as college professors polluting the minds of our young people. Young people saw the situation in Vietnam from their own perspective and made their own decisions.
They say that the press conference on May 8th guaranteed the re-election of Richard Nixon. They also say the shooting on May 4th was the beginning of the end of his reign and his sanity.
UMForPalestine organized a protest at Ole Miss today. Among other things, they demanded that the University divest itself of any holdings in Israel.
When I was in college, there were similar protests. One group demanded that President George Harmon divest Millsaps of any holdings in South African companies. The school actually held no stocks or bonds in South African companies. Still, the thought of anyone trying to tell him what to do so upset Dr. Harmon that he issued a statement refusing to comply, knowing we didn’t actually have any South African investments. He said he was making a point.
I agreed with him. I agreed with the sentiment of “aint gonna play Sun City” and even had a T-shirt that said so, but I didn’t feel like students had the right to demand control of the school’s stock portfolio. UM For Palestine is making similar demands that the University of Mississippi divest itself of Israeli assets if it even has any.
I’m not a big fan of pep rallies. I don’t think they’re an effective way to win football games. I’m not a big fan of protests. I don’t believe they’re an effective way to change policy. The protests all over America didn’t change the course of the war in Vietnam until some students in Ohio and Mississippi were shot and killed. That’s too high a price for me when voting and direct political action are available.
Leading up to today’s protest in Oxford, there were voices on the internet claiming the entire thing was funded by “rich liberal radicals.” I feel certain that George Soros isn’t spending money for protests in Mississippi. One of Mississippi’s most important conservative journalists started calling on Twitter for Ole Miss fraternity boys to “take care” of the protestors. More than a few people likened what Russ Latino was saying on Twitter to what Ross Barnett said in Jackson in 1962. In 1962, it didn’t end well at all.
When I was in college, some people planned to protest injustice and hunger in Africa by building a cardboard shantytown in the bowl. I sat on the roof of Sullivan-Harrell hall with a girl I liked very much, smoking weed, drinking whiskey, and arguing about the protest’s efficacy. My position was that not one single person would be fed because of their protest, but it looked like an awful lot of fun making houses out of cardboard. Her position was that I was an asshole, and I didn’t understand. I considered that a stalemate.
We slept on the golf course and continued our discussion, trying to identify the stars and planets we could see. The next morning, we found out that someone had set fire to one of the cardboard shanty houses while we were on the golf course. Taking my friend back to Sanders, I said, “Nobody got fed because of this, and now somebody’s gonna get expelled or suspended for being a dumbass.” In that case, neither protests nor counter-protests did anybody a damn bit of good.
In America, protest is your constitutional right, and I will defend that right no matter what. Today, the Governor of Mississippi pledged himself to protect the protestors’ freedom of speech. He then tweeted that it warmed his heart how the frat-boy counter-protests broke out in chants of “We Want Trump.” Sometimes, I just can’t with him.
In the end, not one Palestinian and not one Israeli life was protected. The right to existence for neither Palestine nor Israel was asserted. The cops showed up. I haven’t seen where anyone was arrested, but I’d hate to see a student on either side have their academic career threatened without actually accomplishing anything in the protest.
Protests can be effective and important. They can also be a pep rally that doesn’t do anybody any good. Protesting is a risk. You have to make sure it’s worth the risk.
When Millsaps Students and Professors marched around the Mississippi State Capitol to protest shootings in Jackson and matters relating to integration, they were followed and photographed by the State Sovereignty Commission. Forty years later, when those records were released, people I know had to look at photographs of much younger versions of themselves, being stalked by agents of the Governor of Mississippi. This sounds like a horror story I made up, but it’s not.
There are avenues for political and social change that don’t involve the risks associated with protests and counterprotests.
The protests in Oxford seem to be over for the day. It’s my sincere hope that nobody is injured, nobody is arrested, and nobody gets in trouble with the school. I did see a video where a boy threw a bottle of water at one of the protestors, and when she threw a cup of ice water back on him, he literally lost his mind screaming at her. I enjoyed knowing that from what I could see of his middle finger on the video, his BMI is considerably higher than my own.
I support Israel, and I support Palestine. What we’re doing isn’t the way, and what they’re doing isn’t the way. I appreciate college students becoming politically active and informed on both sides. I don’t see that some fat frat boy throwing water bottles is exactly doing that. All of those kids on both sides are in my heart and in my prayers. I would appreciate better leadership from the adults in the state complexes in Jackson, but I don’t know if that’s a reasonable expectation.
It’s my hope that since there already was a Kent State and a Jackson State, our leaders will consider that and not put us in that kind of situation again. That’s my hope, but I can’t say that I see them doing it.
![r/HistoryPorn - Nixon meeting with protesters at the Lincoln Memorial after announcing the bombing of Cambodia, early morning, May 9, 1970. White House records show he didn't sleep that night. [1300 x 800]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8P2I!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe2201d40-690f-45f9-a235-58ef81503723_1366x898.jpeg "r/HistoryPorn - Nixon meeting with protesters at the Lincoln Memorial after announcing the bombing of Cambodia, early morning, May 9, 1970. White House records show he didn't sleep that night. [1300 x 800]")
Boyd,
I feel compelled to respond to your May 2, 2024 post about student protests. In May 1970 I was a junior at Murrah High School and remember the Kent and JSC killings with crystal clarity as all of Jackson heard on May 4. WJDX-FM made the announcement (from a recording I have):
“The bloodiest confrontation in three years of campus demonstrations came today at Kent State University in Ohio. When it was over, four students were dead and eleven others were wounded. Two national guardsmen were treated for shock. The Kent State trouble stemmed from student demonstrations against President Nixon’s Southeast Asian policy. The National Student Association has called for a nationwide college and university strike to protest that policy. The number of allied troops taking part in twin drives into communist sanctuaries in Cambodia has increased to 30,000. An additional 5,000 South Vietnamese joined the operations today.”
We were stunned at the news, which meant that apparently now there was a shooting war at home – against college students protesting the Vietnam situation. Nixon could not possibly have believed he had “won over the nation’s young people” because they were marching in the streets and holding on-campus protests opposing the war. Young people weren’t unanimous in their opposition to the Vietnam situation but a clear majority were, and absolutely nobody wanted to be drafted and sent there. As you allude, each young person had to make his/her own decision about the Vietnam situation and what, if anything, they would do about it whether that was burning a draft card, participating in a protest march, occupying a campus building, or doing nothing at all.
The 1968 – 70 Vietnam-driven “campus unrest” situation is perfectly analogous to today’s widespread, and mostly peaceful, actions of college students today protesting the nation of Israel’s retributory shock and awe attacks on Gazans after the Palestinian militant attack of October 7, 2023 killed 1,143 Israelis. To date mare than 34,000 Gazans have been vengefully killed. Now that IS something for caring people to protest and for U.S. students to do so is not antisemitism it’s antiwar, purely and simply. The mass media have their own motives for spinning the story otherwise.
I take issue with your assertion that protests are not an effective way to change policy. That’s blatantly false. Woman Suffrage protests gave us the 19th amendment to the Constitution and the right for women to vote, the Civil Rights Movement and its protests led to passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that banned racial discrimination, the Anti-Vietnam War protest movement and associated activities ultimately exposed longstanding U.S. government deception of the American people, falsehoods, and whitewashing of U.S. failures in the war. Hence the Paris Peace Talks. The list goes on. In my view, public protests are the ONLY way for the powerless masses to raise global awareness and speak truth to demagogues. In short order that creates change when the demagogues inevitably react because they can’t stand it when the peons give them the middle finger en masse. Film at 11:00!
You are correct that the Kent State and Jackson State killings galvanized the nation and it’s because those students were exercising their right to protest and felt passionate enough about the Vietnam matter to do so. They were speaking truth to power. It never crossed their minds that they could be gunned down for it.
Here is how I hope Kent State and Jackson State changed America: Our colleges and universities should be regarded as sanctuaries where healthy, reasoned debate and discussion on matters of public, even moral, importance are encouraged. Such can occur in many locations and take many forms; the lecture hall, the campus green, the student center. It can even take the form of occupying an administration building or pitching groups of tents in order to wake the bureaucratic demagogues as they snooze in their ivory towers.
The only armed person on a college or university campus should be the one(s) doing traffic and/or parking enforcement. Only in the most extreme circumstance and in direct response to violent acts threatening public safety should outside law enforcement be called to campus because of the great risk that to do so could lead to the deaths of students. Let’s face it, students are passionate and very vocal whereas armed police officers are not known for their level-headedness when clustered in groups and faced with yelling young people. A single individual, even the university president, should not have the sole authority to call in armed enforcers. Too much emotion at play. That authority should rest with a small, standing committee empowered to meet remotely, which would evaluate each situation against an agreed upon, written, set of criteria to decide whether outside use of force is justified and whether the institution is willing to accept the potential horrific result of doing so.